Samsung Gear 360 is a VR camera that will cover your life from any angle

Samsung Gear 360 is a VR camera that will cover your life from any angle

Samsung’s 360-degree virtual camera has been launched in South Korea at a price of 399,000 won (Rs 23,225).

South Korean multinational conglomerate revealed the golf-ball-like camera at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016 held in February.

Called the Gear 360, the little sphere is designed to sit on a table, tripod or even hung from a drone to capture 360 degrees of video.

The dual lens spherical camera also includes a pair of microphones for audio capture, a microSD slot to allow memory expansion up to 128GB, and a removable battery which should allow up to 140 minutes of active use.

The camera has four different shooting modes: video, photo, time lapse video and looping video. The content can be streamed to a phone or viewed from the Gear VR for a true 360-degree video experience.

There's no doubt people like looking at 360-degree video and photos. However, Samsung is betting you'd like to create some immersive content of your own, too.

At Mobile World Congress 2016, the South Korean electronics giant announced the Gear 360, a twin-lens ball of a camera that captures spherical 30-megapixel photos and not-quite-4K resolution video (3,840x1,920 pixels). It joins a fleet of other 360-degree cameras expected in 2016 from companies big and small, including LG which announced its 360 Cam earlier today.

Each of the Gear 360's f/2.0 fisheye lenses covers a 195-degree angle of view that, when stitched together using a Samsung Galaxy S7 (or other select Galaxy phones to be named later), gives you a full 360x180-degree view to explore with a VR headset or dragging around your fingertips on a touchscreen or your cursor on a computer. The brief demo video I viewed using Gear VR was good compared to the current crop of consumer 360 cameras, but it was a brief, stationary clip, shot in full daylight. In other words, ideal conditions for low noise, sharper details and easy stitching.

Availability for the Gear 360 is scheduled for the second quarter of this year, and there is no pricing yet. I would expect it to be at least a few hundred dollars, though with Samsung making the editing/playback device and the VR headset, it's ripe for bundling.

The camera has several other things going for it, not the least of which is Samsung itself, which knows a thing or two about making cameras:

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